


Start a War

by madlypieced



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst and Feels, F/F, Hope, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 00:41:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17735735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madlypieced/pseuds/madlypieced
Summary: Historical AU in which the Luthor clan, known for its ambition and ruthlessness, forges tentative peace and the first empire of its kind. Lex is set to inherit the throne, and Lena has neither the birthright nor interest in it. But what happens when inspirational and hopeful commoner Kara enters her life and Lena finds herself a catalyst for change?Aka the period drama about love, inequality, and power that no one asked for.





	Start a War

**Year 1708:**

“Lena, I’m not ready to grow up.”

The smaller of the pair, with hair as dark as the night sky and evergreen eyes thought too keen for her age, lets out an airy chuckle.

“Lex, you’re already grown up.”

“I’m only sixteen,” Lex retorts. “That’s hardly a grown up.”

He towers a foot over her, but that is the only indication he is the older of the pair. He shares the same dark hair, but his eyes shine brighter and carry a sense of hope that she can’t understand.

“In this palace, it is.”

He doesn’t respond this time, and his silence is enough of an answer for Lena. The pair sits shoulder to shoulder on the steps of the palace’s grandest stairs, gazing into a night sky of both vast emptiness and endless possibilities. There are two armed guards, each with one hand readily fixed onto the sword strapped to their waist belt, only 10 steps above them and another two guards 10 steps below them. But they pay them no mind, speaking openly as if they’re the only two who exist. The only two who matter and, to each other, that is the only truth they surely know.

Lena glances to her left and, though Lex is wordlessly stargazing, she easily reads the stirring emotions beneath his poorly disguised façade. Lying is a gift only one of them inherited. “You have something to say.”

“I don’t.” He is stubborn.

“Your face says otherwise,” Lena quips, a reminder that she has and always will be the more stubborn one. “Brother,” she presses and, expectedly, Lex finally looks at her. His eyes are dark now.

“Do you hear the stories about our father?”

Lena purses her lips. They are now treading dangerous waters. Even if they are his only children and even if they are in the safe confines of his palace, they are surrounded by curious ears and loose lips.

“Do you know of his brutality?”

Not that Lex cares. His criticism is blunt and confident, like water is wet, spoken openly in an even more open location at the steps leading up to their father’s grand hall where court officials meet with him throughout all hours to discuss national matters. This is not the time, and even more so not the place.

“You fear nothing, Lex,” Lena states, a lightness in her voice and reverence that she feels only for him. Where she is meticulous and careful, he is spontaneous and brash. Two poles that theoretically should repel each other, only bound close by their filial ties, but instead they are inseparable and believe they are halves of the same soul. “Even if you are the royal heir, you should still watch your tongue when speaking about the Emperor.”

“History will remember the truth.”

History is written by the victors, Lena almost corrects. While they are halves of the same soul, they are deeply divided in core aspects that she doesn’t try to reconcile.

“Then yes, I’ve heard of the stories,” Lena concedes at last. Their shoulders no longer brush. “The stories of how he murders whole clans if even one individual is suspected of treason. The stories of how he publicly punishes his critics. The stories of how he built an empire on corpses and rules with a bloody sword.”

Lex is visibly agitated, further enraged by how calmly Lena rattles on as if they are simple facts. To her, they are.

“He is the Emperor of an empire that is the first of its kind in centuries. He is the human embodiment of a god, and yet his actions are inhumane and sins to mankind.” Lex is almost yelling at Lena now, but she only looks at him unfazed. Where one is impulsive, the other must be doubly cautious. “Why aren’t you as angry as I am?”

Ah, Lena realizes at last the point of this sudden persecution. Divided as they are, Lex still believes he can change her mind.

“Because while he may or may not do all of the above,” Lena begins cautiously, astutely aware of the guards’ perked ears and wandering eyes, “he also feeds the starving, houses the homeless, and saves those worth saving.”

“Saves those worth saving?” he echoes hollowly. “Who is he to choose?”

“Father ended a seemingly endless travesty between three warring lands where thousands of poor people died fighting a war for the noble class because they had no other choice. For food, for their family’s safety, for survival.”

Lex looks at her with incredulous disbelief that Lena wants to reach out to him, to pull him back into her orbit, to remind him they are indeed on the same side—even if they share vastly different beliefs—but she is stubborn. More so than him, and she believes in what she believes in.

“I…” Lex doesn’t know how to proceed. He is visibly torn, always has been. He so deeply loves their father and the empire he has created from the ashes of three warring lands, but he could never justify or accept the brutality by which he achieved it.

Lena edges closer to him and their shoulders press once more, a physical reminder that they are on the same side. “You want peace for our people.”

“I do,” he says softly, like a prayer, “but not at the expense of others.”

Peace is brittle, fleeting, and costly in these times. Lena knows all these things. Lex should—and likely does—as well, but if he does then he is willfully and defiantly ignorant. Nonetheless, Lena puts a hand over his. He’s warm, even on a chilly autumn night, and Lena thinks it’s poetically so. His optimism is physically carried in a warmth that can spread to others, but Lena is unlike others. She still shivers.

“Then become Emperor.”

Lena quietly says after a lapse of silence.

She feels Lex intensely studying her, trying to find even a hint of a tell that would give away her true thoughts. It is the last thing he expects her to say, after all, given their stark disagreements on what effective kingship looks like.

While Lex is torn between their father’s vision and his means to achieve it, Lena is torn between her respect for their father’s accomplishments and her love for her brother and all that he is. Naivete, optimism, and all. It was never a question of which would win for her, however.

“It’s not that simple,” he dismisses.

“You’re the sole male heir,” Lena replies matter-of-factly. “It actually is that simple.”

Even at 13-years-old, Lena is aware of the gender dynamics of the era they live in. She may be the only other child to the emperor but, to the Luthor clan, she might as well not exist. While Lex has spent his days physically training and learning the intricacies of politics and war since the age of three, Lena was instead schooled in the arts and the delicacies of social fraternization. A political bride-to-be, meant to be married off someday to some noble family to strengthen her clan’s rule over the empire, has neither an interest in nor the right to the throne.

As a female, she has no hope of becoming the favorite. She bears no burden to carry the clan’s aspirations and she will always just be Lena Luthor, who at the height of her power will only be the sister to future Emperor Lex.

“The Luthor clan will always push for an emperor,” she asserts firmly.

Though she should be bitter that she will always concede to Lex, she isn’t. They are the only two children to a newly crowned Emperor and a newly birthed empire still in its infancy. Only they will ever understand each other, truly.

“Will you support me?”

She looks at her brother, only three years older than herself, and bites the inside of her mouth to keep her truth from spilling.

He is so young and has so much life left to live, but he is already strapped with the burden of an entire empire. A burden Lena will never know, a burden Lex will never let her know. She is both grateful for his love and hateful for all that will be taken from him. She doesn’t wish kingship on him, a man as kind and soulful as her idealistic brother.

But she loves him, she remembers, so she swears fealty to him and all of his desires. She will support him despite all odds, but she refuses to explicitly wish such damnation onto him, so she says instead:

“I’d start a war for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> May or may not have been watching too many period dramas late. 
> 
> The real story begins next chapter, as our favorite commoner is set to make her debut in Lena's life.


End file.
